A majority of the candidates from the first list, declared by the BJP for 149 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, were from the backward classes with the party giving tickets to 56 candidates from the Other Backward Class (OBC).
The list included Jats, Gujjars, Lodh and other non-Yadav groups with the 56 candidates making up 45 percent of the 124 non-reserved seats declared on Monday. It also includes at least 26 Thakurs and 15 Brahmins, all of them in western Uttar Pradesh, the Indian Express reported.
Baldev Olakh, from the state's minority Sikh community, got a ticket to contest from Bilaspur. He is also the former district president of Rampur district. Other well-known faces include former UP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh's grandson Sandeep contesting from Atrauli. Kalyan Singh is currently the governor of Rajasthan while his son and Sandeep's father Rajveer Singh is a BJP Lok Sabha MP from Etah.
The BJP has also given an election ticket to SP Singh Baghel from Tundla that is reserved for the Scheduled Castes. Baghel was the national president of BJP's OBC Morcha previously. He joined the party just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.
The BJP list also includes former Congress MLA Pradeep Chaudhary who is contesting elections from Gangoh while RLD MLAs Dalveer Singh and Puran Prakash are contesting from Baroli and Baldev respectively. Rani Pakshalika Singh and sitting Samajwadi Party MLA Raja Aridaman Singh had both joined the BJP last week. The BJP has given Pakshalika, whose name was in Mulayan Singh Yadav's list of candidates declared last month, an election ticket from Bah in Agra, the Indian Express reported.
Former Congress spokesperson Dhirendra Singh has also been given a ticket to contest from Jewar. BJP national secretary and media in-charge Shrikant Sharma, a well-known face among the Brahmin community, will contest from Mathura.
BJP MLAs Sangeet Singh Som and Suresh Rana, who are accused in the Muzaffarnagar riots case, are contesting from Sardhana in Meerut and Thana Bhawan in Shamli district respectively.
However, candidates for the seats of Varanasi and Lucknow have not been declared yet. Varanasi is the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi while Lucknow is the constituency of Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
